Monday, April 25, 2016

As a zen master of the highest order, I’ve taken to scrolling through what passes for motivational bling on my Twitter feed every Monday.

Like the #ff brigade before them, and the #throwbackthursday people 24 hours before that, the #motivationmonday mob now stands poised to flex its inspirational genitalia before our eyes and perform future-creating miracles simply by tugging deftly on any loose skin.

Occasionally, there are gems, but mostly these are verbatim quotes, ripped from the lips of dead sages.

We are parading our laundry right now, occasionally setting chemise against panty and hinting at a whole new spiritual outfit.

But for the most part, no one is saying anything inspiring or incendiary — like “what happens when we’re all super motivated as can be?”

Monday, April 18, 2016

Picking up from my last blog post, I got to wondering about a book I read a while back (as in probably when no one had heard of Nirvana.)

The book in question was called Six Thinking Hats by Edward “Up My Own Arse” De Bono.

As I recall, he argued that business meetings and discussions would be more productive if people took on roles, in much the same way that the successful busting of fantasy dungeons depends on a symbiotically constructive spread of fighters, healers, mages and dubiosity specialists.

(If that’s not what the book was about, then so much for the power of its lasting impression.)

Anyways, I always figured the book was junk because you don’t need people to adopt roles in that way if you first of all ensure that you have the right people on your team.

And — only six hats?

What is this? Magic the Gathering with a canary?

But, like I say, I have been thinking...

I suppose, in its way, this blog requires me to don a “hat”.

(Prolly it is more of a snakeskin belt, ooh ooh, yeah — with a chunky pirate-themed buckle, puh-lease.)

And I suppose what I was saying last time is how it is sometimes difficult to distinguish which hat you are wearing.

I was writing specifically about writing, but I realise now that this point applies to everything in my life.

Like, yeah — I have my Writing “hat”.

Also my Dad “truss”.

My Partner “straitjacket”.

My Wasp Cooking “tights”.

I have multiple interchangeable wardrobes of being, and it’s not always possible to dress consistently.

Hence the sporadic nature of my blog output right now compared to other stuff I’m writing.

Why, those varmint projects are sucking the life out of my platform here as Whirl!

How they conspire to offer me up as a crisp and withered phantom!

My suspicion is that any concept of “hats” (or whatever) is a momentary illusion.

For a time, we may be drilled down on one thing or directing our output along a particular channel.

But it is in our nature to transform.

It’s in our genes to mushy out on the combinatorial.

And let’s not forget good old procrastination!

How bizarre it would be if we struck out on a single path and just kept going.

How weird if we did not meander like caponised ganders.

I know it’s a big deal these days to BE MOTIVATED.

To get a fix on your direction, and head on out in spite of all obstacles.

But, like De Bono’s Six Hat junk, I suspect this POV will look ridiculous in 20 years time.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

When it comes to channelling literary fluids along my various pipes, I’m typically pretty vigilant.

But not this week

Such is my intermingliary confluence potential right now that I can’t be sure I’ll even make it to the end of this sentence without going off on a tangent unconsciously summoned by some other project.

Thing is, I much prefer things this way.

It is how stuff works in real life, out there in the pre-socmedpoopscape where the analogue myth of quantum living re-analogues itself in a kind of perceptual slurry.

People are impossibly moody in this place, and competing narratives channel hop the poncey doncey out of one another beneath the blancmangeclouds of Celebrity’s eerily fixed personas.

If writing is a net trained on the sensible, it surely allows the juiciest stuff to escape, preserving only eels strung out along the strings — or fish so stupid they endeavour only to swim for freedom backwards.

(Probably, in California, there are gold nuggets, and even the odd Icelandic nomad must own a nettable mobile phone, but you get my point. Or do you? My literary fluids per-lump round my network as if plumbed by a pan-flow cocktail enthusiast.)

Friday, April 1, 2016

She’s had it now for just short of 58 years, and though it always comes as a surprise to strangers that she isn’t descended from a line of subterranean lizard people, those of us who know her forgot long ago that she is green and pseudo-warty from head to toe.